


Gospel Song

by ChuckleVoodoos



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Love Confessions, M/M, Tragedy, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 05:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3966607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChuckleVoodoos/pseuds/ChuckleVoodoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gospel Song

It rains, the day of Foggy Nelson’s funeral.

 

It’s a large ceremony, and Matt hates it. All of these people, and they barely know him. But then, that’s the way Foggy always is, isn’t it? Always so bright, drawing people to him and making them love him, love him so much. Moths to a flame.

 

Matt feels like he’s lost his wings, like they’ve been burned right off his back. Moths to a flame.

 

_“One day, Matt, this is going to catch up to you. You can’t always win. You’ll get hurt. You’ll fall, and you won’t be able to get back up again.”_

_“That’s what you’re here for, Foggy.” Matt grins at him through his split lip. “To help me get back up again.” Foggy brushes his fingers across Matt’s shoulder, gentle and kind._

_“Yeah.” He agrees quietly. “That’s what I’m here for.”_

The rain falls hard, soaking the ground, sliding down the smoothness of the tombstones. Matt can see in the rain, the millions of drops striking off the world, lighting it up in sound and bringing everything into sharp focus. He sees everything around him through the rain, all of the stones, shrines to the dead. Crosses all around him, colossal, condemning. Foggy doesn’t get a cross. Foggy never cared about religion, but he never doubted either.

 

_“I have enough to believe in.” Foggy tells him. “I believe in the law, in the good of people.” Matt feels the delicate brush of fingers across his cheek, soft as a butterfly's wing, and he shudders and leans into the touch. “I believe in you.”_

_“I don’t.” Matt tells him honestly, and Foggy nods, head haloed through Matt’s senses. Bright, like a star._

_“Yeah. It’s okay though—I believe in you enough for both of us.”_

It’s cold, Matt thinks vaguely. He doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel anything. It’s all muffled to him, distant, but he knows it’s cold. Everyone around him is wearing thick coats. He feels the feather down shifting in the fabric, the rustle of angel wings. He wants an angel. He wants a miracle.

 

_“You’re a lucky devil, you know.” Foggy says, tweaking one of the horns on Matt’s mask gently. Matt snorts._

_“What makes you say that?” He asks wryly, hissing as Foggy presses down on his chest to stop the bleeding. Foggy makes a little sound, and it’s both so sad and so grateful that it makes Matt’s breath catch._

_“An inch to the left, and I wouldn’t have been able to make that joke.” Foggy tells him quietly, fingers sliding to rest over Matt’s heartbeat—steady before, now thundering under the tender touch of Foggy’s hand. “Lucky.” He exhales shakily. “You won’t always be so lucky, Matt.”_

The priest is saying something, some trite speech about how it’s God’s will. God giveth, God taketh away, he claims. Matt thinks for a dazed moment that he _hates_ God. He’s always thought that there was something bigger, something great and good cradling the world in His hand. Everything happens for a reason. But there is no reason for this. If this is God’s will, then He is not great. He is not good.

 

_“You’re such an altar boy.” Foggy teases him, sitting next to Matt in church. Matt snorts and elbows him._

_“You’re not supposed to be talking.” He chides, and Foggy laughs quietly._

_“It’s not my fault it’s so boring.” He defends. “You made this sound much more fun when you were convincing me to come.”_

 

_“I didn’t ‘convince’ you.” Matt protests. “You asked. Why did you ask if you didn’t want to be here?” Foggy shrugs, and Matt hears the shifting of his suit jacket against his shoulders—the nice one, the one that makes women’s heartbeats speed up just a little when they see him in it._

_“You said you wanted me to come.” He explains, like this is the only thing that matters. Matt remembers. It was a joke. Foggy was teasing him about wasting his Sundays, and Matt had replied that maybe Foggy should try it before he knocked it. Foggy had shown up at his apartment the next morning, wearing the jacket and grinning, Matt could_ see _it, he could even without seeing it._

 

_“I did.” Matt agrees quietly._

They’re saying a psalm, almost like a song. It’s a dull sound, dozens of discordant voices clashing in a cacophony of noise. It feels flat on Matt’s ears. It’s _not_ a song. A song is warm, lilting, and it aches somewhere deep in Matt’s chest and makes his breath catch.

 

_“Do I really have to do this?” Foggy groans when the priest calls for the congregation to join him in song. “I don’t know this one; I can’t even read the notes.”_

_“Just listen to me.” Matt instructs him gently. “Listen to me, and follow after, okay?”_

_“Yeah.” Foggy murmurs, and his voice is thick. “Sure, Matty. I’ll follow.” Matt swallows at the depth of emotion in his voice, and he reaches out and takes Foggy’s hand in his own. Foggy weaves their fingers together, bumping Matt’s shoulder with his own, and the music starts._

_Foggy listens. Foggy follows. Matt’s never heard Foggy sing, not like this. His voice is surprisingly high and crisp, honeyed and happy. It hits all the notes, rises and falls like a bird in flight, and Matt doesn’t hear the other voices anymore. He doesn’t hear the organ, or the guttering sound of the candle flames flickering. All he hears is Foggy, and he loves it, he loves it, he loves—_

_“You okay?” Foggy murmurs, and it takes Matt a moment to realize that he’s stopped singing, hasn’t been singing in a while, too busy losing himself in the sound of Foggy’s voice._

_“Perfect.” Matt tells him hoarsely. “Keep singing. Please.”_

_“Always.” Foggy promises. “I sort of like this song.”_

Matt wants to hear Foggy sing this song. He’d sound so clear and sweet, and he’d hold Matt’s hand and Matt would feel the heat of his body and Foggy would make it come alive, he’d make it real.

 

Matt _never_ wants to hear Foggy sing this song. It’s a funeral song, a threnody. Foggy cares, too much. He’d be crying and shaking, but his voice would never falter. Matt knows. Foggy never falters, even when he’s breaking apart inside.

 

_“You want me to stop.” Matt accuses dully, and Foggy pauses, the soft sound of skin against ceramic as he turns the teapot in his hands. Ginger tea, the scent sharp and strong. Foggy heard once that ginger helps with pain, and Matt’s never had the heart to tell him that there’s not enough, not nearly enough in the tea to help. He’s never needed to, not when Foggy presses the cup into his hands and Matt feels the warmth seeping into him, the tea and the heat from Foggy’s fingertips brushing against his own. It doesn’t hurt anymore._

_“Yes.” Foggy agrees simply._

_“You know I can’t.” Matt whispers, choked. Foggy taps one fingernail against the porcelain of his teacup, a sharp little sound clear in the silence._

_“Yes.” He says again, the same calm certainty in his voice._

_“I want to stop.” Matt lies, because that’s what Foggy wants to hear, isn’t it? And Matt wants it to be true, he does. He doesn’t want to taste the phantom salt of Foggy’s tears in the sharp ginger tea. It’s not there, but he tastes it anyway._

_Foggy doesn’t answer._

Someone brushes a hand against his shoulder, and Matt lashes out before he can stop himself. He flinches back and his cane is flying up and he stops it, maybe an inch before impact. He hears the person’s sharp intake of breath, hears them shy away with a hasty apology. He hears them mutter to their friend. 'Strange man, not quite right in the head. Foggy liked him, though’.

 

Not quite right in the head. An understatement if ever there was one. If only they knew—but they don’t. They never will. No one ever will.

 

Not anyone else.

 

_“You're crazy, you know. Sane people do not hide weapons in every square inch of their apartment.” Foggy teases him, and Matt frowns._

_“I don’t have weapons in every square inch.” He protests, and Foggy laughs. It’s kind, but a little exasperated._

_“Ten wooden spoons in the kitchen, even though you don’t cook. Three thick canes in the stand by the door, even though you don’t use any of them. Two chairs with heavy legs in your living room, even though you always sit on the couch. All long, heavy, blunt instruments, eerily similar to the sticks you use as Daredevil. Oh, the sticks of which you have a set in your closet, in the silverware drawer in the kitchen, and under the cushion I’m sitting on right now.” Foggy lists, using his fingers to count the points. Matt watches them flicker into view like tongues of flame in his vision of fire, hot and clear. He wants to take every one of them into his mouth, one at a time, lick and suck and see if the flame burns him._

_Matt tears his eyes away, blinks at Foggy instead._

_“You…” He pauses when his voice comes out too rough, clears his throat. “You forgot the ones under my bed.” He finally says, and Foggy laughs again._

_“Well, I found the others by mistake. I haven’t really had much of a chance to investigate your bed.”_

_Would you like to? Matt wants to ask. I could show you. I could show you everything. Please let me show you._

_“Fair enough.” He laughs back, and he wonders if Foggy notices it’s too loud._

Everyone leaves. Matt hears them walk away, but no one tries to approach him again. They understand, a subconscious, primal instinct; they sense when something is dangerous and they know to stay away. They learn from their mistakes. They learn, and Matt doesn’t.

 

_He’s not sure why Foggy’s so worried. There have been a million nights like this, and Foggy hates every one, but never like this. ‘I have a feeling’, Foggy tells him when he asks. ‘A horrible, horrible feeling’._

_“There’s something weird about this.” Foggy adds. “They practically handed you the drop sites. Kingpin’s not that sloppy.”_

_“He’s getting desperate.” Matt argues, already pulling his suit on. “I’ve stopped the last six deals, and I’ll stop these three too.” Foggy makes an unhappy sound, and Matt turns to face him. “Hey. It’ll be alright.” He promises softly, resting his hands on Foggy’s shoulders. They tense for a moment, and then slump a little under his touch._

_“Please?” Foggy asks him quietly. “One more night won’t make a difference. You can stop the next one.”_

_“Every night makes a difference.” Matt argues. “You know that.” Foggy shakes his head, the tips of his shaggy hair just brushing against the tops of Matt’s knuckles. Matt can feel the rise and fall of Foggy’s shoulders when he breathes, tiny movements that make it so much_ more _than hearing it across the room. Real, fragile, precious. He can feel the bones under his hands, surprisingly narrow and sloped. Like a bird’s wings._

_“Please, Matt.” Foggy whispers again, and there’s something desperate in his voice. Matt wants to say yes, he wants to say that he’ll do anything Foggy wants him to, always. But what he does isn’t just about him. It’s not about him at all, actually. It’s about keeping people safe, protecting them. Protecting Foggy._

 

_“I can’t.” Matt tells him, aching. He feels the moment Foggy gives up, feels the press of Foggy’s head against his shoulder when he collapses forward._

_Foggy’s arms are tight around his neck, and he feels the shaky breaths Foggy’s taking, warm damp air across his throat. He wants to climb back out of his suit, feel the breath ghosting across skin instead of fabric. He wants to press forward just a little so that Foggy’s lips brush across the hollow of his throat. And Foggy would gasp, surprised, and then he’d smile against Matt’s skin and drag his lips upwards, over Matt’s jaw and pressing briefly against his cheek, his nose, his forehead, and then finally,_ finally _his mouth. He’d smile against that too, until Matt licked the joy out of his mouth and tasted it in his own._

_“I’ll be home soon.” He says instead of pressing forward, a coward once again, for the hundredth time. And he means Foggy’s apartment, not his—that bare, hollow place with blank walls and no warmth. This is home._

_Foggy makes something that feels like a sob, shoulders heaving._

_“Yeah.” He whispers, and it’s not a yes, it’s a ‘no, please, no,’ and Matt closes his eyes and pretends not to hear. “I’ll be waiting, okay? Don’t get dead, Murdock.”_

And Matt doesn't. He keeps his promise. He does his job, the one no one to tells him to do and that everyone needs him to.

 

_The first two drops are easy, almost unprotected. He takes out the guards easily. The first one’s guns, the second one’s drugs, and they’re all easy and in one place, simple to find and make useless._

_He gets to the third drop._

_For a moment he thinks there’s nothing there. There are no men, no scents of sharp gunpowder and the powdery tang of drugs. It’s silent except for a single heartbeat, sick and weak—a drifter maybe, Matt thinks, alone and cold. Not a threat._

_He wonders if it was a mistake, a decoy, if the drop was cancelled. He wonders if there’s another drop he doesn’t know about, wonders how long it will take to find it. Wondering if he’ll have time tonight, or if he’ll have to chase it down tomorrow. Wondering if Foggy’s still awake, if he can climb into Foggy's bed and pretend it’s just because Matt’s too tired to go home._

_A soft, warm scent is faint in the air. Foggy had taken Matt with him to the store once, dragged him down all the aisles until Matt rolled his eyes and pointed out the brands that smelled the best to him. Foggy smells like vanilla shampoo and coconut body wash and ginger from the tea he makes Matt too often._

_Foggy smells like blood._

Matt shudders and doesn’t let himself swallow. He’ll taste it, the metallic burnt flavor that won’t leave his mouth. Won’t leave his mind. It hasn’t left him since that moment.

 

He can’t taste anything else. He can’t taste the coffee that he forced himself to drink this morning, because he hasn’t slept in days and he needed to be awake for this, every moment, never letting himself drift away to softer times. He can’t taste the toast he tried to eat, the first thing he’d tried in a week, and he can’t taste the strawberry jam that he spread on top because Foggy loves strawberry jam, and Matt always puts it out in the morning in case Foggy comes. He can’t taste the bile in his mouth when he retches and heaves, after he realizes that he doesn’t need to buy the jam anymore.

 

Matt thinks he could taste _Foggy_ , if he was here—warm breath and slick tongue and strawberry jam lingering along the corners of his mouth for Matt to lick away, sweet and soft.

 

He doesn’t know what Foggy tastes like. He never let himself.

 

_Trap. Not a mousetrap, a snare—baited with something sweet, snapping, catching on the bone, crippling. A snare is cruel, meant to hurt rather than kill. The killing comes later, when the animal’s tired and terrified._

_Something sweet._

_A single heartbeat, soft and weak—getting weaker with every stumbling step Matt takes towards it. He feels like he’s walking on glass, every step cutting up through skin and bone. He keeps walking._

_“I can’t breathe.” Foggy gasps out, and Matt knows why. He hears it like a drum, booming and blooming in his brain. Percussion, he thinks distantly, clinical in his assessment. Hyper-resonant. Sign of traumatic, advanced pneumothorax._

_Collapsed lung._

_“You’ll be okay.” Matt tells him, falling to his knees beside him. “I just need to find out what’s wrong, so that I can make it better. Okay?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, running careful fingers over Foggy’s body._

_Dislocated shoulder, broken collarbone. Bruised liver, damaged kidney, bullet… bullet wounds in upper arm, between the eighth and ninth rib (Along the side, just scraping, enough to hurt but not to kill. Cruel.) and just at the crest of the hip. Both femurs shattered—they didn’t want him to get up again, wanted to make sure he was there when Matt arrived. Matt will have to carry him out and it will hurt, it will hurt so much Foggy might scream._

_“That bad, huh?” Foggy manages to gasp out, and Matt hushes him, runs a hand through his hair. Slick blood on the back of his head; he adds a head wound to the tally, possible concussion, watch for signs of altered consciousness._

_“No.” Matt lies. “You’ll be fine.” Foggy tries to laugh, but it doesn’t come out right, too high and short, cut off with a cough._

_“Fisk…Fisk says hi.” He grits out. “Didn’t tell him…anything. I’m not sure…he needed me to.”_

_“I’ll kill him.” Matt promises, soft and cold._

_“No…you won’t.” Foggy tells him, and somehow through the pain and weakness of his voice the fondness shines through. “Saint…Matthew.”_

Not a saint, Matt thinks. Foggy always calls him that, ruffles his hair and laughs. He says it when Matt takes on a particularly hopeless case, right before he dives right in beside Matt and doesn’t stop until it's over and won. He calls him that when Matt comes home to him, and there is blood on his suit and on his skin. Foggy helps him out of his suit, hands gentle, and wipes the blood from his skin with a damp cloth. He sighs and calls Matt ‘Saint Matthew, Martyr of Mankind’, only a little bitterly.

 

Matt’s not a saint. He didn’t think there was any part of himself left inside, but he thinks of Fisk and he _hates,_ and he’s not sure, not sure anymore that he _won’t_ kill him. Saint Matthew. He doesn’t want to be a martyr anymore. He wants other people to know what it feels like, people who deserve the pain that comes with the title.

 

_“No…guilt. Matt. I know…how this works.” Foggy whispers. “You’ll…kill yourself…with it.”_

_“But I am guilty.” Matt tells him, and he thinks it’s started to rain. It takes him a moment to realize that he’s crying, and the rain is just a tear falling onto Foggy’s cheek, sliding down it like a caress. Matt’s fingers follow it, wiping it away before it can fall any further. “It’s my fault.”_

_“Idiot.” Foggy tells him bluntly. “I…chose this.”_

_“No, I did.” Matt snaps at him. He’s not angry at Foggy, but he’s angry, so angry at everything else. “I chose it, and you followed me because I asked. You always follow me.”_

_“Always.” Foggy agrees, breathless and is it from the trauma or from something else? Matt remembers the incense of the church, thick and heavy in the air. Foggy next to him, singing and sounding so joyful that he might crack at the corners. ‘Always’._

_Matt takes Foggy’s hand, weaves their fingers together. He wonders if Foggy would try to sing for him, if Matt asked. No, not wonders. He knows. Foggy doesn’t have the breath left, but he’d try anyway._

_Foggy doesn’t have enough breath left to sing, and then…_

_And then Foggy doesn’t have any breath left at all._

 

Martyrs die for their faith.

 

Matt is not the one who dies.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what this is. I am so sorry.
> 
> Full passage, if you've lasted to this point, is: 
> 
> "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:1-12)


End file.
